


Folly

by embarrassing old stuff from LJ pre-2015 (prevaricator)



Category: NewS (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-05
Updated: 2010-03-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 12:06:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prevaricator/pseuds/embarrassing%20old%20stuff%20from%20LJ%20pre-2015
Summary: Shige comes to realize that breaking up with Koyama was a mistake.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from LJ

**Folly**  
KoyaShige, pg-ish (may contain swearwords, I don't remember)  
Almost completely angst (except the most important part, I keep to my principles), romance(???), 2299 words  
Summary: Shige comes to realize that breaking up with Koyama was a mistake.

A/N: I know I say I hate angst, but all I really care about is the end. This is inspired by Twitter RP but is for the most part unrelated. It's also the longest thing I've ever written. Probably means it's boring as all getout. It is now waaaaaaaay past my bed time.

  
Shige rolled over and looked at the clock. Two a.m., it told him in unforgiving red numbers. He sighed. He'd been trying to sleep for two hours, then.

He hadn't gotten more than three or four hours of sleep at once for a month. He was exhausted.

He dragged himself out of bed with a groan. His thoughts would just keep festering if he stayed in bed.

He looked around his aparment for something to do. It was sparkling clean as a result of more than a week of trying to distract himself from things.

His eyes landed on the bookcase. The books in it weren't in any sort of order. Thinking it would at least occupy him, he wandered over to it and started moving things around.

He began by moving all of the large textbooks to the bottom shelf. He wondered if he would ever use any of them again, now that he'd graduated.

Maybe he should leave Johnny's and take up law. It might be easier to deal with things that way.

He immediately chased that thought out of his head. NEWS would collapse. Nobody would ever forgive him.

He wasn't sure if anyone would ever really forgive him for breaking up with Koyama, but so far everyone he knew had at least pretended not to judge.

But the point of rearranging his bookcase was to distract him from all of that.

He managed to focus on arranging the smaller books alphabetically by author for a while. At one point he dropped a book. When he bent down to pick it up, he noticed something sitting between the bookcase and his couch.

It was a small tin he thought he'd lost months ago, he realized. He grabbed it and opened it to find four exposed rolls of medium format film.

He considered them. Three of them he knew were from a day trip he'd taken to the mountains with Koyama, but he was unsure of the fourth.

Koyama was guaranteed to be on all of them, somewhere.

In the end, curiosity got the better of Shige, and he set up the darkroom in his bathroom.

 

 

It had been a while since he'd been inspired enough to shoot off a roll of film, but he hadn't forgotten how to develop it. He grabbed two rolls-he only had a two-roll tank- and shut off the lights to reel them. He had a little trouble with one, but it went on easily on the second try. With the reels safely in the tank, he turned on the light.

He tugged on his rubber gloves before he started using the chemicals. He'd done it barehanded the first few times, but Koyama hated the smell it left on his hands and in the air.

It seemed a little silly to Shige for someone who smoked to be that bothered over something like that, but the gloves weren't really a bother.

The lavender-scented air freshener Koyama insisted on using was a little bit annoying, though.

Shige sighed as he rinsed the film. There were so many things that had felt unbearable to him a month ago. In his mind, the cons had outweighed the pros.

He'd been questioning his judgment for the past three weeks, ever since he'd finally told Koyama.

He spent the next few minutes focusing on the clock and agitating his tank.

By the time he was done developing the second set of film, the first two rolls were dry. He took them down and cut them, then decided to print contact sheets. Maybe if he gave up on sleeping at all tonight, he'd be able to sleep better the next.

He didn't look at the negatives before he printed his test strips of them, and even those he cut horrendously narrow.

When he threw the contact sheet of the mystery roll into the developer, though, it was impossible not to see the images on it. He cursed the medium format film- the individual pictures were all large enough to make out without a magnifying glass.

 

 

They were all of Koyama, but for two of Nyanta.

He remembered the day now. Koyama had stopped by on his way home from taking Nyanta to the vet and ended up spending the night.

Shige pulled the sheet out of the fixer and flipped the room light on to stare at it.

The first picture was of Koyama standing in Shige's entryway with his cat carrier in one hand. He was clearly posing for the camera, wearing a serious expression like it was a magazine shoot.

The second was the same, except Koyama was sticking his tongue out at Shige.

The sixth was of Koyama lying on the couch with Nyanta curled up next to him.

There was a closeup of Koyama's face. He was looking straight into the camera and laughing at something Shige had said.

No. Shige had made the mistake of touching his nose after touching Nyanta. He'd snapped the shot while Koyama was laughing at the sneezing fit that resulted.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a little voice commented that he was lucky the picture was in focus.

The last two were of Koyama standing in the kitchen in the morning making tea. He was shirtless and had bed hair. His back was to the camera in the first shot, but he was pouting straight at it in the second.

There were two things that were painfully obvious in all the pictures. The first was that Koyama was happily in love with Shige, and completely comfortable around him.

The second was that Shige was in love with Koyama.

He left the print soaking in water to wash it and walked out into his living room.

 

 

Everything was exactly the same as it was in the photographs he'd been looking at, except that Koyama and his cat were nowhere to be found.

For the first time since the night he'd left Koyama crying on his doorstep, Shige cried.

 

 

By seven in the morning, he was glad he had the day off. His eyes were red and puffy, and he had a splitting headache. He'd looked like crap every day for the past month, but he couldn't go out in public like this.

Instead, he decided to sleep all day.

His nap was interrupted at half past noon by his phone ringing. He glanced at the screen long enough to see Tegoshi's name, then turned over and tried to ignore it.

The ringing stopped and started up again. He sighed and answered it. Tegoshi would probably show up at his door if he ignored the phone long enough.

"What do you want," he said, not bothering to disguise his grogginess. Maybe Tegoshi would clue in to Shige's lack of desire for conversation. Stranger things have happened.

"Shige! You were supposed to meet me for lunch," Tegoshi whined.

Shige racked his brain. "No, I wasn't."

He'd been to depressed lately to take up anyone's invitations to food.

"Yeah you were. It's okay, though. I figured you'd forget, so I got takeout. I'm at your apartment building now. Can you buzz me in?"

The brat must have planned this, Shige realized as he hauled himself out of bed and went to the phone on the wall as it started ringing. Tegoshi had probably known that Shige wouldn't turn him away if he was already at Shige's place. He picked up the wall phone and punched seven to open the gate for Tegoshi.

He brushed his hair, splashed his face with water, and threw on a shirt and pants before Tegoshi could get there, for once glad that he lived a distance from the front gate of the building.

 

 

Tegoshi came in with a bag of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Shige sat there eating it and grunting in response to everything Tegoshi said. He waited for Tegoshi to get to the point.

He was sure there was one. This was odd, even for Tegoshi.

"So, you and Koyama," Tegoshi said eventually. "Are you guys seriously over?"

Shige stayed silent for a moment, staring at his plate. Trust Tegoshi to be painfully blunt.

"I-," he started to say, then stopped again. "I guess."

"Are you okay with that?" Tegoshi persisted.

"It was my decision," Shige dodged the question.

"That's not what I was asking."

Shige threw the chicken bones in the trash and started washing his plate.

Tegoshi followed him and grabbed his shoulder. "Shige. Answer me," he said, annoyed.

"What do you think?"

It wasn't really a question that needed an answer, but Tegoshi answered it anyway. "I think you haven't slept in weeks. You look like shit. I think you miss Koyama."

Tears built up in Shige's eyes, against his will. He finished washing the plate, but stared at his feet to avoid making eye contact with Tegoshi.

"And? I broke up with him, Tegoshi. What am I supposed to do?"

Another rhetorical question. "Talk to him, Shige."

"And do what, ask him to take me back? He's not a spineless idiot," Shige snorted bitterly. He'd broken Koyama's heart.

"Yes, actually," Tegoshi said. "You might be surprised. And you won't be any worse off if he refuses."

"What if I hurt him again?"

"Then I'll kill you. But you won't," Tegoshi added. "You're not that stupid."

He turned around to gather his things. "Look, Shige. You're unhappy. And in case you've been to self-absorbed to notice, Koyama's miserable, too. But if you just go talk to Koyama, you might be able to fix things."

With that, Tegoshi left.

Shige cleaned up the remains of Tegoshi's lunch.

He spent the rest of the day making prints from the negatives he'd developed the night before and considering what Tegoshi had said. Eventually, he came to a decision.

It didn't help him sleep that night.

 

 

The next day, NEWS was together to work on their dancing for the single. Shige caught Koyama when they were finished.

"Can we talk?" Shige asked. He clenched his hands around his bag of practice clothes to keep his hands from shaking.

Koyama nodded, not meeting his eyes. Shige led him to the practice room next to theirs, gone unused all day.

Once there, all of Shige's planned words disappeared. He tried to remember them.

Koyama just stood there, avoiding his gaze. It made it easy to take a good look at him.

Tegoshi was right- Koyama looked miserable. It hit Shige like a kick to the gut, but it gave him a small glimmer of hope.

"Koyama, I- I know I hurt you, and I'm horribly sorry, and I probably don't have a chance in hell, but," he gathered himself. "But it was a mistake. It was. I don't really know. A bunch of little things were bothering me, and they all stacked up and got to be too much. But none of it bothered me as much as you being gone does.

"And I realized that the truth is, I'm still in love with you. I thought I wasn't. I'm an idiot. And I know I probably don't have a chance, but-" He trailed off, vaguely aware that he was repeating himself. He tried to surreptitiously wipe the tears off his cheeks. "But in case you're ever willing to take me back."

The phrasing was awkward, but he thought he'd gotten his point across.

Koyama was silent for a long time. Shige started to feel like he was going to vomit.

"It's not that easy, is it?" Koyama finally spoke, still avoiding eye contact. Shige could see tear tracks on his cheeks. "You hurt me, Shige. I loved you so much, but you just threw it all away. I just don't know if I can forgive you for that."

Shige nodded. "Okay," he said. "I understand. And I'm really, really sorry."

He stared at his feet for a few seconds more, but Koyama didn't seem to have any more to say. "I- I guess I'll be going now," Shige said.

He shuffled home, feeling only about as miserable as he had before. He was glad for his big, face-hiding sunglasses. They covered his red eyes and the most of the tear tracks on his cheeks.

He passed Tegoshi on the way out of the building, but couldn't bring himself to say anything.

 

 

Once home, he collapsed on his bed and cried some more.

He'd actually dozed off when he heard the phone on the wall ring. He thought he was hallucinating when he saw Koyama's face on the screen connected to the camera at the building entrance.

If it was a hallucination, it was a strong one. Koyama's voice came through the phone, "Can you let me in?"

Shige pressed seven. He watched as Koyama walked through the gate, and the screen stopped showing him anything.

A long minute later, there was a knock on his door. He opened it.

Koyama stumbled through. He immediately removed his shoes and wrapped his arms around Shige. He was crying too hard to say anything for a long while. Shige tentatively returned the hug and waited patiently, trying not to get his hopes up too high.

"So I was thinking," he said. "Well, really, Tegoshi was thinking. But he asked me if it's worth being miserable forever because I'm too afraid to give you a second chance. And he was right. So this is your second chance. Don't waste it, okay?"

"Okay," Shige replied. "Okay. Thank you." And then he buried his face in Koyama's shoulder and cried. Koyama eventually moved them to Shige's bed, where they both kept crying until they fell asleep.

When Shige woke up next to Koyama the next morning, all he could think was that it was the first thing that felt right in weeks.

 

THE END. Edits, anyone? I wrote this very late at night. orz


End file.
